Keeping Track of the Codes on Completion Cards

Codes?
What codes? Oh, those groups of three or four code combinations that can
appear on a completion card. I've seen them before but never paid attention.

OK, time to pay attention. What are they there for? Probably as an assist to
the person making sure the order is complete. The letters change every series.
It appears it doesn't matter what type of
Completion Card it is, most have the same lettering.

So what about this set of four code groups on either side of this text?
What series are they from? If you check the chart below you can figure it out.

Starting from top to bottom, do you think you can guess what each one is used
for? A guy named Dave Huebert approached me with something that made a lot of
sense. He has been researching. Collecting for over 40 years to boot. You see, if you sent in a card, you got your
stuff and the card back in the mail. So there are plenty of marked up
cards that went to Red Rose, came back, and could now be in your collection. His
theory is that the top box represents a New Album, the second, the Current
Album, the third, a Card Set and the last one represents Loose Cards. What do
you think?

Interesting that the US version of series 6 skips right to butterflies as the
next album. Makes it clear that they chose specifically to omit 7 in the US.

It seems like at the time of the printing of the
Type C cards for series 15,
that they might have been considering stopping the series. No Arctic? No
Indians? Thank goodness they thought better of it.

I have never seen a Type C
series 16 or series 17 completion card. I would love a scan (front and back,
please) if anyone ever finds one. I'm not convinced they exist.

Now that you are familiar with the codes, you can see that it is African
Animals, Series 7 that is show in the images above.

How about belief in Dave's system? You know, new album, current album, full
set, loose cards. I believe it. As I was researching for this page I noticed a Type
D in my collection from series 15 that really proved his point. Check it
out. The top and bottom boxes are checked (N and Ly). That should mean
that the person was to get an Arctic album and loose Animals & Young cards.
Looking at the lower portion we see .15¢ for loose cards and a dime for an
Arctic album. Hmmm, seems just right to me. Way to go Dave! By the way, I just
scratched out the name on this completion card scan to protect the innocent
;-) I also just noticed that I have seen that swirly sign-off (is it a C
or an L?) on completion cards before. OK, back to the vault....

Thanks again to Dave Huebert for a really interesting sidebar to the Red Rose
story.